The Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP) Consultative Group Meeting is a gathering of the relevant scientific community with recognized expertise and knowledge of CBPP. The meetings are joint undertakings of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), the African Union/Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU/IBAR) and the FAO/IAEA Division (International Atomic Energy Agency). Regular meetings of an ad hoc expert panel as it was formerly known, were held in the sixties where experience with the performance of CBPP diagnostic techniques, various control measures and strategies were exchanged and debated. Recommendations that arose from these meetings were disseminated widely, especially to countries where the disease is of particular significance. The last meeting of the ad hoc expert panel was in 1970 when the eradication of CBPP from Australia was completed and the situation in Africa seemed to be under control. Dr Alain Provost chaired this meeting.
In recent years, there has been an upsurge in the incidence of CBPP in Africa to an alarming extent reminiscent of that of the early 1960s. This situation prompted a similar meeting of an expert panel, now called the CBPP Consultative Group that met in Rome in October 1998, to update the current knowledge of CBPP in recognition of the fact that CBPP had become the major cattle disease in Africa. The second meeting of this group was held in October 2000 and it reported a worsening CBPP situation. The group considered scientific, technological advances and tools necessary to aid in the control of CBPP against the background of rural poverty and an increasing global demand for meat, milk and other animal products. Efforts were directed towards designing effective and realistic strategies that could lead to control of CBPP in Africa.
In 2003, the third meeting of the CBPP Consultative Group involved field veterinarians, laboratory diagnosticians, researchers, policy makers and international partner institutions and this assembled wide expertise mostly from Africa and Europe. The report provides an account of the presentations made at this Consultative Group Meeting, its recommendations and summaries of discussions. Progress made with diagnostic tests that could advance epidemiological surveillance and research advances that may be useful for vaccine development/improvements, are reported in these proceedings. It is hoped that the outputs of these meetings will provide the technical basis for supporting the control of the disease in Africa, as an effective entry point in improving peoples’ livelihoods.
Samuel C. Jutzi
Director
FAO Animal
Production and Health Division
Agriculture Department
